Mystery hopper

It was grimly autumnal again, and I woke up feeling tired and flat. A walk around the garden turned up a Field Grasshopper, a couple of Common Carders and a Small Tortoiseshell, but very little else, so I wandered down to Tilly's field to see if there was anything more inspiring going on there. As I was rummaging in the grass for Orthoptera I began to notice a huge number of tiny leafhoppers pinging around, like pale seeds exploding from a popped seed pod, and I started trying to get some of them on camera. 

There are all kinds of problems with recording leafhoppers, catching them being the first one. This is best done with a sweep net and a pocketful of bug pots, but I didn't have that equipment with me, and opted not to go home to fetch it because the mild interest I was feeling towards the little guys really didn't justify a full-blown harvesting project. Once you've swept and potted your hopper you can either chill it in the fridge for a while to slow it down, or simply tap it out onto a flat surface and photograph it fast before it leaps or flies away, but I didn't want to move any of the bugs from their meadow environment to our fridge, then risk losing them in the garden before I could return them home safely, and the speed with which they were moving about in the grass suggested that tapping them onto the wall and trying to get focus on them before they sprang away was likely to be a fool's errand. So I just wandered through the long grass, putting the hoppers to flight as I brushed past, tried to see where they came down again, and grabbed some photos where I could. 

It was an extremely inefficient means of carrying on, If I'm honest, but when I went through the photos later I found that I'd captured four different species, which was mildly satisfying. Athysanus argentarius should have been the easiest because it was the biggest one present, but it was also the strongest, and managed in the end to leap past me and disappear before I'd taken anything better than a few blurry record shots. Stenocranus major presented itself face-on in an attempt not to be recognised, but was given away by its mad antennal insertions. 

The two photos I'm posting here tonight demonstrate the other major problem with recording leafhoppers, which is identifying the blooming things. At first glance these specimens are so similar that you might think they were the same type of bug, but they're not; however, both are so pale and poorly marked that they're not easy to match with the few available online identification resources. I'm maybe 70% confident that my second photo shows an Arthaldeus hopper, and when I record it I'm going to cross my fingers and take a punt on it being A. pascuellus, which is a common species of dry grasslands. The venerable Verifier will soon put me straight if I'm wrong. As to the individual in the main image though, I've really struggled. In the end my best guess is that it's a female Conosanus obsoletus, despite it not really being as spotty as I'd like, and the fact that the nearest rushes I can think of to Tilly's field are in my wild garden. I will record it, but my confidence level this time is very much lower.